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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
I spent my first 35 years living in California. The cold but beautiful part. I've lived in San Antonio (the patron saint of lost articles) for over ten years now, so I am more than well-qualified to cast analysis, or aspersions, in just about any direction.
In the first place, wages are low in San Antonio, but so is the cost of living. It is still possible to own a home and twenty minute commute to work! Praise your favorite anthropomorphization of the truth! But the quality of life, while higher than Mexico, is not as healthy and healthful as my home state. After ten years here and never so much as having hayfever or a sneeze, increasingly I have noticed both during the Spring.
As an IT worker, I was out of work for a good three years due in no small part to the importation of cheap labor from Bangalore and all places south of the border. What economic boom were we referencing, exactly? I am employed, once again, thank goodness, but in a position of significantly less "security", salary and standing. However, I am grateful I have anything at this point. I have not only my recent personal experiences but also the experiences of friends who grew up in Mexico to buttress my conclusion that much of what is in Mexico is creeping northward and precious little is heading south.
So rather than globalization representing a gigantic free-for-all of abundance where the standard of living rises for the middle class everywhere, we can expect that, just as in Mexico, the middle class will disappear leaving only the jaded and inbred rich to further disrupt and destroy the spec of cosmic dust we presently call, "home."
San Antonio, if one looks more closer than did your reporter, does represent the future of the American worker: selling french fries and hustling cable TV over the phone because not everyone with a college education gets to be an astronaut or an oil magnate. Discrimination is still very much here with all the po' folks living on the south and west sides of town, and the rich white minority occupying the exclusive homes ever-farther north of town while the disenfranchised blacks occupy the dwindling infrastructure of the east side.
The tale is not one of race or ethnicity, but of rich and poor. Always has been, always will be. If were living as my ex-wife in an over-priced 600,000 dollar home in central California, I would sell the damn thing and buy ten of the same kind of home here in Texas. The animosity Texans hold towards most things Californian resembles something more than an economic or political war, but a Civil War. Based in Houston, the objective has long been to shake every nickel out of California and put it in Texas. Not everyone has to be a victim of warfare.
As the dollar slides those who mortgaged themselves in paradise will wake up with nothing in the middle of a blazing hell. And, as I've discoverd, people in hell don't drink ice water...they drink iced tea. Sweet or unsweet.
Anyone can write a human interest story focusing on a single immigrant and use it to make any point they want. So I'll write one about the opposite of Plascencia, the immigrant who jumped the long list of people from Asia and Europe who applied for a visa about the same time Plascencia sneaked in to this country illegally. The people from Asia and Europe are still waiting.
I'll call my guy Jesus, because that's his real name and he's currently in our county lock-up. Jesus came across the Rio Bravo at a remote spot just south of Larado. He made his way north all the way to Denver where he had relatives who concealed him from authorities. If you believe we are a country of laws, Jesus and his relatives have both committed federal crimes. The first thing Jesus did was to get a forged birth certificate. From there, it was easy to get a Colorado drivers license. The Social Security card was a little harder, but he simply adopted the SSN that about 200 other illegals were using on a fake SS card. Now Jesus got a job. He was washing dishes in LoDo.
Jesus turned out to be a hard worker, just like the open borders people like to hold up as an example. But although Jesus worked hard, in his free time, his life was hell. He came here for a better life but he really didn't count on how lonely he would be. His relatives who had come to this country a generation ago now were assimilated. They spoke English. He did not. They had accumulated nice things. He had none.
Jesus was a stranger in a strange land. All his life he dreamed of coming to America and now here he was and it was not what he dreamed it would be. Jesus became resentful when ever he saw Gringos driving BMWs and spending $250 on food and wine in the restaurant where he slaved away cleaning the remains of their dinners off of fine china.
Jesus became bitter. He needed a way to release his anger. One day he saw a man leave his car running while dropping off some dry cleaning and Jesus impulsively jumped behind the wheel and took off. He got a bottle of taquila and went cruising up and down Federal Boulevard, looking cool. He ran a red light and t-boned a Suburban. Jesus ran away, leaving a woman and her two kids injured and no recourse but to pay their own medical and car damage themselves.
A few weeks later, Jesus met a Mexican-American girl and began courting her. But after a few weeks, she didn't like him anymore. She didn't like the way Jesus was always trying to grope her. Jesus was miserable. He was a proud man, but no matter how he tried, he couldn't get her to give in. He hated all this teasing. So one evening he'd had enough. All she needed was a strong man to overcome her resistance and once he was having her, she would learn to enjoy it. He didn't understand the culture. Here in America, they call this date-rape.
She told her mother, who called police. They came for Jesus at his workplace. They placed him under arrest. The City and County of Denver assigned him a biligual public defender. His relatives would not bond him out. While he was in the county lockup, the Denver police ran his paper and none of it matched. They called the INS. The INS said forget it, they had stacks of cases ahead of this one.
The public defender got Jesus off pleading to a lesser offense and away he went. He got a job at a meat processing plant north of Denver. He hung out with other illegal single men at an apartment complex where there was a nightly parade of crack users coming and going. Jesus liked crack. It made him feel on top of the world. But working in a stinking turkey factory didn't give him enough to stay on top of the world for long. So he bought a hot .25 cal semi-auto pistol and went looking for some cash. He decided on a self-serve gas station. The seventy-something retired man who worked there was nice to everybody he met. He thought the best of people. When Jesus came in, the old man smiled and greeted him. Jesus poked the gun in his face. The old man said OK and opened the cash drawer and stood back while Jesus helped himself. Then for no particular reason at all, he pumped three slugs into the old man's heart and lungs and watched him die.
Jesus didn't get far. The old man had triggered the silent alarm and the cops saw Jesus strolling up the street a block away with his hands in his pockets. They found the money and the gun. Jesus was charged with homicide. Jesus has been assigned another bilingual public defender at the expense of you and I, to represent him in court.
Now, isn't that just another wonderful "undocumented worker" story? Warms your heart, don't it?
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Thanks for sharing, Governor. Now please take a cue from Norm Coleman, and go away
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